Speech of William Howard Taft accepting the Republican nomination for president of the United States, : together with the speech of notification by Senator Elihu Root.

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62d CONttBESSi GWIMATT? / DOCDMBNT

SdSemm ] SENATE 1 No. 902

SPEECH OF

WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT

ACCEPTING THE REPUBLICAN

NOMINATION FOR PRESIDENT

OF THE UNITED STATES

TOGETHER WITH THE SPEECH
OF NOTIFICATION BY

SENATOR EUHU ROOT

DELIVERED AT WASHINGTON, D. C.
AUGUST 1, 1912

PRESENTED BY MR. BRANDEGEE
August 9, 1912.— Ordered to bd printed

WASHINGTON
1912

fry

O

SENATOR ROOT'S SPEECH OF NOTIFICATION.

Senator Root said :

Mr. President, the committee of notification here present has the
honor to advise you formally that on the 22d day of June last you
were regularly and duly nominated by the national convention of
the Republican Party to be the Republican candidate for President
for the term beginning March 4^ 1913.

For the second time in the history of the Republican Party a
part of the delegates have refused to be bou^;^ by the action of the
convention. Now, as on the former occasion, the irreconcilable
minority declares its intention to support either your Democratic
opponent or a third candidate. The reason assigned for this course
is dissatisfaction with the decision of certain contests in the niaking
up of the temporary roll of the convention. Those contests were
decided by the tribunal upon which the law that has governed the
Republican Party for more than 40 years imposed the duty of
deciding such contests. So long as those decisions were made
honestly and in good faith all persons were bound to accept them as
conclusive in the making up of the temporary roll of the convention,
and neither in the facts and arguments produced before the national
committee, the committee on credentials and the convention itself,
nor otherwise, does there appear just ground for impeaching the
honesty and good faith of the committee's decisions. Both the mak-
ing up of the temporary roll and the rights accorded to the persons
upon that roll, whose seats were contested, were, in accordance with
the long-established and unquestioned rules of law governing the
party, and founded upon justice and common sense. Your title
to the nomination is as clear and unimpeachable as the title of any
candidate of any party since political conventions began.

KEPKESENTATIVE OF REPUBLICAN PRINCIPLES.

Your selection has a broader basis than a mere expression of

choice between different party leaders representing the same ideas.

You have been nominated because jon stand preeminently for certain

fixed and essential principles which the Republican Party main-

^ tain. You believe in preserving the constitutional Government of

i the United States. You believe in the rule of law rather than the

rule of men. You realize that the only safety for nations, as for

^ individuals, is to establish and abide by decTared principles of action.

^ You are in sympathy with the great practical rules of right conduct

i that the American people have set up for their own guidance and

^ self-restraint in the limitations of the Constitution — the limitations

upon governmental and official power essential to the preservation

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260135

of liberty and justice. You know that to sweep away these wise
rules of self-restraint would be not progress, but decadence. You
know that the great declarations of principle in our Constitution
can not be made an effectual guide to conduct in any other way than
by judicial judgment upon att^Bipts to violate th#Bj; ai»d you main-
tain the independence, dignity, and authority of the courts of the
United States. You are for progress along all the lines of national
development, but for progress which still preserves the good we
already have and holds fast to those essential elements of American
institutions which have made our country prosperous and ffreat and
free. You represent the spirit of kindly consideration by every
American citizen toward all his fellows, respect for the right of
adverse opinion, peaceable methods of settling differences — the spirit
and the method which make ordered and peaceful self-government
possible, as distinguished from intolerance and hatred and violence.
In respect to all these things our country is threatened from many
sides. It is your high privilege to be the standard bearer for the
cause in which you believe; and in that cause of peace and justice
and liberty the millions of your countrymen who believe as you
do will stand with you, and the great party which was born in the
struggle for constitutional freedom will support you.

SPEECH OF WrurAM HOWARD TAFT AGCEPTING THE NOMINA-
TION FOR THE PRESIDENCY BY THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL
CONVENTION.

Mr. Root and Gentlemen or the Notification Comhittee :

I accept the nomination which you tender. I do so with profound
gratitude to the Republican Party, which has thus honored me
twice. I accept it as a^n approval of what I have done under its
mandate, and as an expression of conlideiftce that in a second admin-
istration I will serve the public well. The issue presented to the con-
vention, over which your chairman presided with such a just and
even hand, made a crisis in the party's life. A faction sought to force
the party to violate a valuable and time-honored national tradition
by intrusting the power of the Pi^esidency for more than two terms
to on^ man, and that man one whose recently avowed political views
would have oomttiitted the party to radical prop^als involving dan-
gerous changes in our present constitutional form of representative
government and our independenrt judiciary.

This occasion is appropriate for the expression of profound grati-
tude at the victory mt the right which was won at Chicago. By that
vicix)ry the Repuolican Party was saved for future usefulness. It
has been the party through which substantially all the progress and
development m our country's history in the last fifty years has been
finally effected. It carried the country throu^ the war which saved
the Union, and through the greenback and silver crazes to a sound

fold basis, which saved the country's honor and credit. It fought the
Spanish War and successfully solved the n^ew problems of our island
possessions. It met the incidental evils of the enormous trade e:span*
sion and extended combinations of capital from 1897 until now by a
successful crusade against the attempt of concentrated wealth to con-
trol the country's politics and its trade. ^It enacted regulatory legis-
lation to make the railroads the servants and not the masters of the
people. It has enforced the antitrust laws imtil those who were not
content with anything but monopolistic control of various branches of
industry are now acquiescent in any plan which shall give them ^cupe
for legitimate expansion and assure them immunity from reckless
prosecution.

The Republican Party has been alive to the modern change in the
view of the duty of government toward the people. Time was when
the least government was thought the best, and the policy which left
all to the individual, unmolested and unaided by government, was
deemed the wisest. Now the duty of government by positive law to
ftirther equality of opportunity in respect of the weaker. classes in
their dealings with the stronger and more powerful is clearly recog-
ni^A, It; IS in this direction that real progress toward the greater
human happiness is being made: It has been suggested that under

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our Constitution such tendency to so-called paternalism was im-
possible. Nothing is further from the fact. The power of the Fed-
eral Government to tax and expend for the general welfare has long
been exercised, and the admiration one feels for our Constitution is
increased when we perceive how readily that instrument lends itself
to wider governmental functions in the promotion of the comfort
of the people.

The list of legislative enactments for the uplifting of those of our
people suffering a disadvantage in their social and economic rela-
tion, enacted by the Republican Party in this and previous adminis-
trations, is a long one, and shows the party sensitive to the needs of
the people under the new view of governmental responsibility.

Thus there was the pure- food law and the meat-inspection law to
hold those who dealt with the food of millions to a strict account-
ability for its healthful condition.

The frightful loss of life and limb to railway employees in times
past has now been greatly reduced by statutes requiring safety
appliances and proper inspection, of which two important ones
were passed in this administration.

The dreadful mining disasters in which thousands of niiners met
their death have led to a Federal mining bureau and generous appro-
priations to further discovery of methods for reducing explosions
and other dangers in ndining.

The statistics as to infant mortality and as to the too early em-
ployment of children in factories have prompted the creation of a
children's bureau, by which the whole public can be made aware of
actual conditions in the States and the best methods of reforming
them for the saving and betterment of the coming generation.

The passage of time has brought the burdens and helplessness of
old age to many of those veterans of the Civil War who exposed their
lives m the supreme struggle to save the Nation, and reco^izing this,
Congress has added to previous provisions, which patriotic gratitude
had prompted, a substantial allowance, which may be properly char-
acterized as an old men's pension.

By the white-slave act we have sought to save unfortunates from
their own degradation, and have forbidden the use of interstate
commerce in promoting vice.

In the making of the contract of employment between a railway
employee and the company, the two do not stand on an equality,
and the terms of the contract which the common law implied were
unfair to the employee. Congress, in the exercise of its control over
interstate commerce, has re-formed the contract to be implied and has
made it more favorable to the employee. Indeed, a more radical bill,
which I fully approve, has passed the Senate and is now pending in
the House which requires interstate railways in effect to insure the
lives of their employees and to make proAdsion for prompt settle-
ment of the amount due under the law after death or injury has
occurred.

By the railroad legislation of this administration, shippers have
been placed much nearer an equality with the railroads whose lines
they use, than ever before. Rates can not be increased except after
the Interstate Commerce Commission shall hold the increase reason-
able. Orders against railways which under previous acts might be
stayed by judicial injunction that involved a delay of two years

can now be examined and finally passed on by the Commerce Court
in about six months. Patrons of express, telegraph, and telephone
companies may now secure reasonable rates by complaint to the
commission.

Many millions are spent annually by the Department of Agri-
culture to investigate the best methods of treating the soil, carry-
ing on agriculture, and publishing the results. We are now looking
into the question of the best system for securing such credit for the
farmer at reasonable rates as'^ will enable him better to equip his
farm and to follow the rules of good farming, which we must encour-
age. Our platform, I am glad to say, specifies this as a reform to
which the party is pledged. The necessity for stimulating greater
production of foodstuffs per acre becomes imperative as the vaf*ant
lands available for the extension of acreage are filling up and the
supply of foodstuffs as compared with the demand is growing less
each year.

Congress has sought to encourage the movement toward eight
hours a day for all manual labor by the recent enactment of a new
law on the subject more stringent in its provisions, regarding works
on Government contracts.

One of the great defects in our present system of government is the
delay and expense of litigation, which of course works against the
poor litigant. The Supreme Court is now engaged in a revision of
the equity rules to minunize delay and expense as to half our Federal
litigation. The workmen's compensation act will relieve our courts
of law of a very heavy part of the present dockets on the law side of
the court and give the court more opportunity to speed the remaining
causes. The last Congress codified the Federal court provisions, and
we may look for, and should insist upon, a reform in the law pro-
cedure so as to promote dispatch of business and reduction in costs.

We have adopted in this administration, after very considerable
opposition, the postal savings banks, which work directly in the pro-
motion of thrift among the people. By reason of the payment of
only 2 per cent interest on deposits they do not compete with the
savings banks. But they do attract those who fear banks and are un-
willing to trust their funds except to a governmental agency. Ex-
perience, however, leads depositors to a knowledge of the importance
of interest, and then seeking a higher rate they transfer their accounts
to the savings banks. In this way the savings-bank deposits, instead
of being reduced, are increased, and there is thus available a much
larger tund for general investment.

For some years the administration has been recommending the
parcel post, and now I am glad to say a measure will probably be
adopted by Congress authorizing the Government to avail itself of
the existing machinery of the Post Office Department to carry parcels
at a reasonably low rate, so that the communication between the city
and the country in ordinary merchandise will be proportionately as
low priced and as prompt as the newspaper and letter delivery
through the post offices now. This must contribute greatly to reduc-
ing the cost and increasing the comfort of living.

We are considering the changing needs of the people in the disposi-
tion of our public lands and their conservation. As those lands
owned by the Government and useful for agricultural purposes which
remain are as a whole less desirable as homesteads than those which

8

have been already settled, it has been properly thought wise to
r^wee the time for perfecting a homestead claim from five years
k) three, and this whether on land within the rain area or in tho^
arid tracts v/ithin the reclamation districts.

A^ain, a bill has passed the Senate and is likely to pass the House
which will not compel the settlers on reclamation lands to wait 10
years and until full payment of what they owe the Government be-
fore they receive a title, but which gives a title after 3 years with
a first Grovernment lien.

On the other hand, the withdrawal of coal lands, phc^phate lands,
and oil lands and water-power sites is still maintained until Con-
gress shall provide, on the principles of proper conservation, a system
of disposition which will attract capital on the one hand and retain
sufficient control by the Government on the other to prevent the evil
of concentrating absolute ownership in a few persons of those sources
for the production of necessities.

POPULAR UNREST.

In the work of rousing the people to the danger that threatened
our civilization from tl^ abuses of concentrated wealth and the
power it was likely to exercise, the public imagination was wrought
upon and a reign of sensational journalism and unjust and unprin-
cipled muckraking has followed, in which much injustice has been
done to honest men. Demagogues have seized the opportunity fur-
ther to inflame the public mind and have sought to turn the peculiar
conditions to their advantage.

We are living in an age in which by exaggeration of the defects
of our present condition, by false charges of responsibility for it
against individuals and classes, by holding up to the feverish im-
agination of the less fortunate and the discontented the possibilities
of a millennium, a condition of popular unrest has been produced.
New parties are being formed, with the avowed purpose of satis-
fyinjy this unrest by promising a panacea. In so far as inequality of
condition can be lessened and equality of opportunity can be pro-
moted by improvement of our educational system, the betterment of
the laws to insure the quick administration of justice, and by the
prevention of the acquisition of privilege without just compensation,
in so far as the adoption of the legislation above recited and laws of
a similar character may aid the less fortunate in their struggle with
the hardships of life, all are in sympathy with a continued effort to
remedy injustice and to aid the weak, and I venture to say that there
is no national administration in which more real steps of such prog-
ress have been taken than in the present one. But in so far as the
propaganda for the satisfaction of unrest involves the promise of a
millennium, a condition in which the rich are to be made reasonably
poor and the poor reasonably rich by law, we are chasing a phantom ;
we are holding out to those whose unrest we fear a prospect and a
dream, a vision of the impossible.

In the ultimate analysis, I fear, the equal opportunity which is
sought by many of those who proclaim the coming of so-called social
justice involves a forced division of property, and that means social-
ism. In the abuses of the last two decades it is true that ill-gotten

wealth has been concentrated in some undeserving hands, and if it
were possible to redistribute it on any equitable principle to those from
whom it was taken without adequate or proper compensation, it
would be a good result to bring about. But this is obviously im-
possible and impracticable. All that can be done is to treat this
as one incidental evil of a great expansive movement in the material
progress of the world and to make sure that there will be no recur-
rence of such evil. In this regard we have made great progress and
reform, as in respect to secret rebates in railways, the improper con-
ferring of public franchises, and the immunity of monopolizing
trusts and combinations. The misfortunes of ordinary business, the
division of the estates of wealthy men at their death, the chance of
speculation which undue good fortune seems often to stimulate,
operating as causes through a generation, will do much to divide
up such large fortunes. It is far better to await the diminution of
this evil by natural causes than to attempt what would soon take
on the aspect of confiscation or to abolish the principle and institu-
tion of private property and to change to socialism. Socialism in-
volves the taking away of the motive for acquisition, saving, energy,
and enterprise, and a futile attempt by committees to apportion the
rewards due for productive labor. It means stagnation and retro-
gression. It destroys the mainspring of human action that has
carried the world on and upward for 2,000 years.

I do not say that the two gentlemen who now lead, one the Demo-
cratic Party and the other the former Republicans who have left their
party, in their attacks upon existing conditions, and in their attempt
to satisfy the popular unrest by promises of remedies, are consciously
embracing socialism. The truth is that they do not offer any definite
legislation or policy by which the happy conditions thej promise are
to be brought about, but if their promises mean anythmg, they lead
directly toward the appropriation of what belongs to one man, to
another. The truth is, my friends, both those who have left the
Republican Party under the inspiration of their present leader, and
our old opponents, the Democrats, under their candidate, are going in
a direction they do not definitely know, toward an end they can not
definitely describe, with but one chief and clear object, and that is of
acquiring power for their party by popular support through the
promise of a change for the tetter. What they clamor for is a
change. They ask for a change in Government so that the Govern-
ment may be restored to the people, as if this had not been a people's
Government since the beginning of the Constitution. I have the
fullest sympathy with every reform in governmental and election
machinery which shall facilitate the expression of the popular will as
the short ballot and the reduction in the number of elective offices
to make it possible. But these gentlemen propose to reform the
Government, whose present defects, if any, are due to the failure
of the people to devote as much time as is necessary to their political
duties, by requiring a political activity by the people three times
that which thus far the people have been willing to assume; and
thus their remedies, instead of exciting: the people to further inter-
est and activity in the Government, will tire them into such an in-
difference as still further to remand control of public affairs to a
minority.

10

But after we have changed all the governmental machinery so as
to permit instantaneous expression of the people in constitutional
amendments, in statutes, and in recall of public agents, what then?
Votes are not bread, constitutional amendments are not work, refer-
endums do not pay rent or furnish houses, recalls do not furnish
clothing, initiatives do not supply employment or relieve inequali-
ties of condition or of opportunity. We still ought to have set before
us the definite plans to bring on complete equality of opportunity and
to abolish hardship and evil for humanity. We listen for them
in vain.

Instead of giving us the benefit of any specific remedies for the
hardships and evils of society they point out, they follow their urgent
appeals for closer association of the people in legislation by an
attempt to cultivate the hostility of the people to the courts and to
represent them as in some form upholding injustice and obstruct-
ing the popular will. Attempts are made to take away all those
safeguards for maintaining the independence of the judiciary which
are so carefully framed in our Constitution. These attempts find
expression in the policy, on the one hand, of the recall of judges,
a system under which a judge whose decision in one case may tem-
porarily displease the electorate is to be deprived at once of his office
by a popular vote, a pernicious system embodied in the Arizona con-
stitution and which the Democrats of the House and Senate refused
to condemn as the initial policy of a new State. The same spirit
manifested itself in the vote by Democratic Senators on the proposi-
tion, first, to abolish the Commerce Court, and, second, to abolish
judges by mere act of repeal, although under the Constitution their
terms are for life, on no ground except that they did not like some of
the court's recent decisions. Another form of hostility to the judiciary
is shown in the grotesque proposition by the leader of former Republi-
cans w^ho have left their party, for a recall of decisions, so that a decision
on a point of constitutional law, having been rendered by the highest
court capable of rendering it, shall then be submitted to popular vote
to determine whether it ought to be sustained. Again, the Demo-
cratic party in Congress and convention shows its desire to weaken the
courts by forbidding the use of the writ of injunction to protect a
lawful business against the destructive effect of a secondary boycott
and by interposing a jury in contempt proceedings brought to enforce
the court's order and decrees. These provisions are really class legisla-
tion designed to secure immunity for lawlessness in labor disputes on the
part of the laborers, but operating much more widely to paralyze the
arm of the court in cases w^hich do not involve labor disputes at all.
The hostility to the judiciar}^ and the measures to take away its power
and its independence constitute the chief definite policy that can be
fairly attributed to that class of statesmen and reformers whose
control the Republican Party escaped at Chicago and to whom the
Democratic Party yielded at Baltimore.

The Republican Party stands for none of these innovations. It
refuses to make changes simply for the purpose of making a change,
and cultivating popular hope that in the change something bene-
ficial, undefined, will take place. It does not believe that human
nature has changed. It still believes it is possible in this
world that the fruits of energy, courage^ enterprise, attention to
duty, hard work, thrift, providence, restraint of appetite and of

11

passions will continue to have their reward under our present sys-
tem> and that laziness, lack of attention, lack of industry, the yield-
ing to appetite and passion, carelessness, dishonesty, and disloyalty
will ultimately find their own punishment in the world here. We do
not deny that there are exceptions, and that seeming fortune follows
wickedness and misfortune virtue, but, on the whole, we are optimists
and believe that the rule is the other way. We do not knaw any way
to avoid human injustice except to perfect our laws for administering
justice, to develop the morality of the individual, to give direct super-
vision and aid to those who are, or are likely to be, oppressed, and
to give as full scope as possible to individual effort and its rewards.
Wherever we can see that a statute which does not deprive any per-
son or class of what is his is going to help many people, we are in
favor of it. We favor the greatest good to the greatest number, but
we do not believe that this can be accomplished by minimizing the
rewards of individual effort, or by infringing or destroying the
right of property, which, next to the right of liberty, has been and
is the greatest civilizing institution in history. In other words, the
Kepublican Party believes in progress along the lines upon which
we have attained progress already. We do not believe that we
can reach a millennmm by a sudden change in all our existing insti-
tutions. We believe that we have made progress from the beginning
until now, and that the progress is to continue into the far future;
that it is reasonable progress that experience has shown to be really
useful and helpful, and from which there is no reaction to something
worse.

The Eepublican Party stands for the Constitution as it is, with such
amendments adopted according to its provisions as new conditions
thoroughly understood may require. We believe that it has stood
the test of time, and that there have been disclosed really no serious
defects in its operation.

It is said this is not an issue in the campaign. It seems to me
it is the supreme issue. The Democratic Party and the former
Republicans who have left their party are neither of them to be
trusted on this subject, as I have shown. The Republican Party is
the nucleus of that public opinion which favors constant progress
and development along safe and sane lines and under the Constitu-
tion as we have had it for more than 100 years, and which believes
in the maintenance of an independent judiciary as the keystone of
our liberties and the balance wheel by which the whole governmental
machinery is kept within the original plan.

WHAT THE ADMINISTRATION HAS DONE.

The normal and logical question which ought to be asked and
answered in determining whether an administration should be con-
tinued in power is. How has the Government been administered?
Has it been economical and efficient? Has it aided or obstructed
business prosperity? Has it made for progress in bettering the con-
dition of the people and especially of the wage earner? Ought its
general policies to approve themselves to the people ?

During this administration we have given special attention to the
machinery of government with a view to increasing its efficiency and

12

reducing its cost. For 20 years there has been a continuous expan-
sion in every direction of the governmental functions and a nec-
essary increase in the civil and military servants by which these
functions are performed. The expenditures of the Government have
normally increased from year to year on an average of nearly 4 per
cent. There never has been a systematic investigation and reorgan-
ization of ihis governmental structure with a view to eliminating
duplications, to uniting bureaus where union is possible and more
effective, and to making the whole organization more compact and
its parts more closely coordinated. As a beginning, we examined
closety the estimates. These, unless watched, grow from year to
year under the natural tendency of the bureau chiefs. The first
estimates which were presented to us we cut some $50,000,000, and
this policy we have maintained through the administration and
have prevented the normal annual increase in Government expen-
ditures, so the result is that the deficit of $58,735,000, which we
found on the 1st of July, 1909, was changed on the 1st of July,
1910, by increase of the revenues under the Payne law, including
the corporation tax, to a surplus of $15,806,000; on July 1, 1911.
to a surplus of $47,234,000; and on July 1, 1912, to a surplus of
$36,336,000. The expenditures for 190*9 were $662,324,000; foj-
1910, $659,705,000; for 1911, $654,138,000; and for 1912, $654,804,000.
These figures of surplus and expenditure do not include any receipts
or expenditures on account of the Panama Canal.

I secured an appropriation for the appointment of an Economy and
EfBciency Commission, consisting of the ablest experts in the country,
and they have been working for two years on the question of how the
Government, departments may be reorganized and what changes can
be made with a view to giving them greater effectiveness for govern-
mental purposes on the one hand and securing this at considerably
less cost on the other. I have transmitted to Congress from time to
time the recommendations of this commission, and while they can not
all be adopted at one session, and while their recommendations have
not been rounded and complete because of the necessity for taking
greater time, I think that the Democratic Appropriations Committee
of the House has become convinced that we are on the right road and
that substantial reform may be effected through the adoption of most
of the plans recommended by this commission.

PANAMA CANAL.

For the benefit of our own people and of the world we have carried
on the work of the Panama Canal so that we can now look forward
with confidence to its completion within 18 months. The work
has been a remarkable one, and has involved the expenditure of
$30,000,000 to $40,000,000 annually for a series of years, and yet it
has been attended with no scandal, and with a development of such
engineering and medical skill and ingenuity as to command the
admiration of the world and to bring the highest credit to our Corps
of Army Engineers and our Army Medical Corps.

33

FOREIGN BELATIONS.

In our foreign relations we have maintained peace everywhere and
sought to promote its continuance and permanence.

We have renewed the Japanese treaty for 12 more years and
have avoided certain difficulties that were supposed to be insuperable
as between the two countries by an arrangement which satisfies both.

We negotiated certain broad treaties for the promotion of universal
arbitration which, if they had been ratified, would have greatly con-
tributed toward perfecting machinery for securing general peace.
The Democratic minority of tlie Senate withheld the necessary two-
thirds vote, and amended the treaties in such a way as to make it
doubtful whether they are worth preserving.

In China we have exercised a beneficial influence as one of the
powers interested in aiding that great country in its forward move-
ment and in its effort to establish and maintain popular government.
In order that our influence might be useful we have acted wnth
the other great powers and have exercised our influence effectively
toward the strengthening of the popular movement and giving the
Republic governmental stability. We have lent our good offices in
the negotiation of a loan essential to the continuance of the Eepublic
&nd which we hope that China will accept under such conditions of
supervision as are adequate to the security of the lenders and at the
same time will be of great assistance to those in whose behalf the
loan is made, the people of China.

Our Mexican neighbor on the south has been disturbed by two revo-
lutions and these have necessarily brought a strain upon our relations
because of the losses sustained by American citizens, both in property
and in life, due to the lawlessness which could not be prevented under
conditions of civil war. The pressure for intervention at times has
been great, and grounds upon which, it is said, we might have inter-
vened have been urged upon us, but this administration has been
conscious that one hostile step in intervention and the passing of the
border by one regiment of troops would mean war with Mexico, the
expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars, the loss of thousands
of lives in the tranquilization of that country, with all the subsequent
problems that would arise as to its disposition after we found our-
selves in complete armed possession.

In order to avoid the plain consequences, it seemed the course of
patriotism and of wisdom to subject ourselves and our citizens to
some degree of suffering and inconvenience and to pass over with
a strong protest and a claim for damages even those injuries inflicted
on our peaceful citizens in our own territory along the border by
flying bullets in engagements between the governmental and the
revolutionary forces on the Mexican side. It is easy to arouse popu-
lar indication over an instance of this character. It is easy to take
advantage of it for the purpose of justifying agCTessive action,, and
it is easy to cultiTate political support and popmarity by a warlike
and truculent policy, but with the familiarity that we have had in
the carrying on of such a war in the Philippines and in Cuba, no one
with a sense of responsibility to the American people would involve
them in the almost unending burden and thankless task of enforcing
peace upon these 15,000,000 of people fighting among themselves,

14

when they would necessarily all turn against us at the first manifesta-
tion of our purpose to intervene. I am very sure that the course of
self-restraint the administration has pursued in respect to Mexico
will vindicate itself in the pages of history.

I am hopeful that the present Government is now rapidly subduing
the insurrection and that we may look for tranquillity near at hand.
The demonstration of force which I felt compelled to make in the
early part of the disturbance, by the mobilization of some 15,000 or
20,000 troops in Texas, and holding maneuvers there, had a good and
direct effect and, as our ambassador and consuls report, secured much
increased respect for American and 'other foreign property in the
disturbances that followed. Similar questions have arisen in Cuba,
but Ave have been able to avoid intervention, and to aid and encour-
age that young Republic by suggestion and advice.

I am glad to believe that we have had more peace in the Central
American Eepublics because of our attention to their needs and our
activity in mediating between them than ever before in the history
of those Republics.

THE NAVY.

The dignity and effectiveness of the Government of the United
States, together with its responsibility for the protection of Hawaii,
Porto Rico, Alaska, Panama, and the Philippines, as well as for the
upholding of the Monroe doctrine, require the maintenance of an
Army and a Xavy. We can not properly reduce either below its
present effective size. The plan for the maintenance of the Nav}^ in
proportion to the growth of other navies of the world calls for the
construction of two new battleships each year. The Republican Party
has felt the responsibility and voted the ships. The Democratic
Party, in Plouse caucus, repudiates any obligation to meet this
national need.

THE PHILIPPINES.

The Philippines have had popular government and much pros-
perity during this administration in view of the free trade which
they'^have enjoyed under the Payne bill. The continuance of the
same policy with respect to the Philippines will make the prosperity
of those islands greater and greater and will gradually fit their
people for self-government, and nothing will prevent such results
except the ill-advised policy proposed by the Democratic Party of
holding before the Philippine people independence as a prospect of
the immediate future.

OUR FOREIGN TRADE.

During this administration everything possible has been done to
increase our foreign trade, and under the Payne bill the maximum
and minimum clause furnished the opportunity for insisting upon
the removal by foreign countries of discriminations in that trade, so
that the statistics show that our exports and imports reached for
the year ending July 1, 1912, a higher figure than ever before in the
history of the country. Our imports for the last fiscal year, ending
July 1, 1912, amounted to $1,653,426,174 and our exports to $2,049,-
320,199, or a total of $3,857,648,262. If there were added to this the

15

business done with Porto Eico, Hawaii, and the Philippines, the
sum total of our foreign trade would considerably exceed $4,000,-
000,000. The excess of our exports over imports is $550,795,914.
Manufactures exported during the year 1912 exceed $1,000,000,000,
and surpass the previous record. These figures seem to show that
the business is large enough to produce prosperity, and the fact is
that it has done so.

PROTECTIVE TARIFF.

The platform of 1908 promised, on behalf of the Republican Party,
to do certain things. One was that the tariff would be reviseu at
an extra session. An extra session was called and the tariff was
revised. The platform did not say in specific words that the revi-
sion would be generally downward, but I construed it to mean tnat.
During the pendency of the bill and after it was passed, it was sub-
jected to the most vicious misrepresentation. It was said to I e a
bill to increase the tariff rather than to reduce it. The law has been
in force now since August, 1909, a period of about 35 months. We
are able to judge from its operation how far the statement is true
that it did reduce duties.

It has vindicated itself. Under its operation, prosperity has been
gradually restored since the panic of 1907. There have been no dis-
astrous failures and no disastrous strikes. The percentage of reduc-
tion below^ the Dingley bill is shown in the larger free list and in the
lower percentage of the tariff collected on the total value of the goods
imported. The figures show that under the Dingley bill, which was in
force 144 months, the average per cent of the imports that came in
free was in value 44.3 per cent of the total importations, and that
under the Payne bill, which has been in force 35 months, the average
per cent in value of the imports which have come in free amounts to
51.2 per cent of the total ; that the average ad valorem of the duties
on dutiable goods under the 12 years of the Dingley bill was 45.8
per cent, while under the 35 months of the Payne bill this was 41.2
per cent, and that the average ad valorem of duties on all the im-
ports under the.Dingley bill was 25.5 per cent, while under the Payne
bill it was 20.1 per cent. In other words, considering only reductions
on dutiable goods, the reduction in duties from the Dingley bill to the
Payne bill was 10 per cent, and considering reductions" on all im-
ports, it amounted to 21 per cent.

Under the provisions of the Payne bill I was able to appoint a
Tariff Board to make investigations into each schedule with a view
to determining the cost of production here and the cost of production
abroad of the articles named in the schedule, in order to enable Con-
gress in adjusting this schedule to know what rate of duty was neces-
sary to prevent a destructive competition from European countries
and the closing up of our mills and other sources of production. We
are living on an economic basis established on principles of pro-
tection. A large part of our products are dependent for existence
upon a rate of duty sufficient to save the producer from foreign
competition which would make the continuance of his business im-
possible. In the making of the Payne bill Congress did not have
the advantage of the report of the Tariff Board showing the exact

16

facts. If it had, the bill would have been constructed on a better
basis, but we now have had the Tariff Board working and it has
made a report on the production of wool and the manufacture of
woolens in this country and abroad, and has compiled and made
public similar data as to the manufacture of cotton goods. If the
Eepublican Party had control of the House of Representatives, there
would be no difficulty now in passing a woolen bill like those which
have been presented by the Republicans in both Houses of Congress,
reducing the duty on wool and on woolens to such a degree as not to
include more than enough to enable the grower of wool and the
woolen industry to live and produce a reasonable profit. The same
thing could be done with respect to the cotton industry. On the
other hand, our opponents, the Democrats, presented to me for my
signature a woolen bill and a cotton bill, both of which if allowed to
become laws, as the reports of the Tariff Board show, would have
made such a radical cut in the rates on many woolen and cotton
manufactures as seriously to interfere with those industries in this
country. This would have forced a transfer of the manufacture to
England and Germany and other foreign countries.

THE RESULT OF DEMOCRATIC SUCCESS.

If the result of the election were to put the Democrats completely in
control of all branches of the Government, then we should look for the
reduction of duties upon all those articles which need protection, and
may anticipate a serious injury to a large part of our manufacturing
industry. We would not have to wait for actual legislation on this
subject; the very prospect of Democratic success when its policy
toward our great protected industries became understood would post-
pone indefinitely the coming of prosperity and tend to give us a recur-
rence of the hard times that we had between 1890 and 1897. The Dem-
ocratic platform declares protection to be unconstitutional, although
it has been the motive and purpose of most tariff bills since 1789, and
thus indicates as clearly as possible the intention to depart from a
protective policy at once. It is true the Democratic platform says
that the change to the policy of a revenue tariff is tobe made in such
a way as not to injure industry. This is utterly impossible when we
are on a protective basis ; and it is conclusively shown to be so by the
necessary effect of bills already introduced and passed by the Demo*
cratic House for the purpose of making strides toward a revenue
tariff. It is now more than 15 years since the people of this country
have had an experience in such a change as that which the coming in
of the Democratic Party would involve. It ought to be brought home
to the people as clearly as possible that a change of economic poLey,
•-uch as that which is deliberately proposed in the Democratic plat-
form, would halt many of our manufacturing enterprises and throw
many wage earners out of employment, would injure much the
home markets which the farmers now enjoy for their products, and
produce a condition of suffering among the people that no reforming
legislation could neutralize or mitigate.

17

THE HI<;H cost of living and the PAYNE LAW.

The statement has been widely circulated and has received con-
siderable support from political opponents, that the tariff act af
1909 is a chief factor in the high cost of living. This is not true. A
careful investigation will show that the phenomenon of increased
prices and cost of living is world-wide in its extent and quite as
much in evidence in other countries of advanced civilization and
progressive tendencies as in our own. Bitter complaints of the bur-
den of increased prices and cost of living have been made not only in
this country and Europe, but also in countries of Asia and Africa.
Disorder and even riots have occurred in several European cities be-
cause of the unprecedented cost of food products. In our own coun-
try, changes have been manifested without regard to lower or higher
duties in the tariff act of 1909. Indeed, the most notable increase in
prices has been in the case of products where no duties are imposed,
and in some instances in which they were diminished or removed by
the recent tariff act.

It is difficult to understand how any legislation vaguely promised
in a political platform can remedy this universal condition. I have
recommended the creation of a commission to study this subject and
to report upon all possible methods for alleviating the hardship of
whi(^ the people complain, but great economic tendencies, notable
among which are the practically universal movement from the
country to the city and the increased supply of gold have been the
most potent factors in causing high i>rices. These facts every care-
ful student of the situation must admit.

EFFECT or EXCESSrVE TARIFF RATES.

There is one respect in which high tariff rates may make for ex-
orbitant prices. If the rate is higher than the difference between
the cost of production here and abroad, then it tempts the manufac-
turers of this country to secure monopoly of the industry and to in-
crease prices as far as the excessive tariff will permit. The danger
may be avoided in two ways : First, by carefully adjusting the tariff
on articles needing protection so that the manufacturer i^cures only
enough protection to pay the scale of high wages which obtains and
ought to obtain in this country and secure a reasonable profit from the
Imsiness. This may be done by the continuance of the Tariff Board's
investigation into the facts, which will enable Conffr^s and tihe
people to know what the tariff as to each schedule ought to be. The
American public may rest assured that should the Republican Party
be restored to power in all legislative branches, all the schedules in
the present tariff of which complaint is made will be subjected to
investigation and report without delay by a competent and impartial
Tariff Board and to the reduction or change which may be necessary
to square the rates with the facts.

The other method of avoiding danger of excessive prices from
excessive duties is to enforce the antitrust laws against th(^e who
combine to take advantage of the excessive tariff rates. This brings
me to the discussion of the Sherman Act.

S. Doc. 902, 62-2 2

18

ANTITRUST LAW.

The antitrust law was passed to iDrovide against the organization
and maintenance of combinations for the manufacture aad sale of
commoditites, which through restraint of trade, either by contract
and agreement or by various methods of unfair competition, should
suppress competition, establish monopoly, and control prices. The
measure has been on the statute books since 1890, and many times
under construction of the courts, but not until the litigation '^against
the Standard Oil Co. and against the American Tobacco Co. reached
the Supreme Court did the statute receive an authoritative construc-
tion which is workable and intelligible.

NEW CONSTRUCTIVE LEGISLATION.

It would aid the business public if specific acts of unfair trade
which characterize the establishment of unlawful monopolies should
be denounced as misdemeanors for the purpose, first, of making
plainer to the public what must be avoided, and, second, for the pur-
pose of punishing such acts by summary procedure without the neces-
sity for the formidable array of witnesses and the lengthy trials es-
sential to establish a general conspiracy under the present act. But
there is great need for other constructive legislation of a helpful kind.
Combination of capital in great enterprises should be encouraged,
if within the law, for everyone must recognize that progress in
modern business is by effective combination of the means of produc-
tion to the point of greatest economy. It should be our purpose,
therefore, to put large interstate business enterprises acting within
the law on a basis of security by offering them a Federal corporation
law under which they may voluntarily incorporate. Such an act is
not an easy one to draw in detail, but its general outlines are clearly
defined by the two objects of such a law. One is to secure for the
public, through competent Government agency, such a close super-
vision and regulation of the business transactions of the corporation
as to preclude a violation of the antitrust and other laws to which
the business of the corporation must square, and the other is to fur-
nish to business, thus incorporated and lawfully conducted, the pro-
tection and security which it must enjoy under such a Federal charter*
With the faculties conferred by such a charter, corporations could do
business in all the States without complying with conflicting exac-
tions of State legislatures, and could be sure of uniform taxation,
i. e., uniform with that imposed by the State on State corporations
in the same business.

OPPOSED TO PROPOSED DRASTIC AMENDMENTS.

I am not in sympathy with the purpose to make the antitrust law
more drastic by such a provision as is proposed by the Democratic
majority of the investigating committee of the House, for imposing a
rule as to burden of proof upon defendants under antitrust prosecu-
tions different from that which defendants in other prosecutions
enjoy. This can not be suggested by any difficulty found in proving
to the courts the illegality of such combinations when the illegality
exists. I challenge the production of a single record in any case in

19

which an objectionable combination has escaped a decree against it
because of any favorable rule as to the burden of proof. It is true
that many defendants in criminal cases have escapeci by a failure of
the jury to convict, but that arises from the reluctance and refusal of
jurors to find verdicts upon which men are likely to be sent to the
penitentiary for pursuing a course in business competition which the
ordinary man did not regard as immoral or criminal before the
passage of the act.

CONSISTENT COURSE IN PROSECUTION OF THE LAW.

I think I may affirm without contradiction that the prosecution of
all persons reported to the Department of Justice to have vio-
lated the antitrust law has been carried on in this administrafion
without fear or favor, and that everyone who has violated it, no
matter how prominent or how great his influence, has been brought
l)ef ore the bar of the court either in civil or criminal suit to answer
the charge.

It is the custom of those who find it to their political interest to do
so to sneer at, as innocuous, the decrees against the American Tobacco
Company and against the Standard Oil Company, and the adminis-
tration is condemned in the Democratic platform for consenting to
a compromise in the Standard Oil case. There was no compromise.
The Standard Oil decree was entered by the circuit court, and then
by the Supreme Court, on the prayer of the Government contained in
the original bill filed in a previous administration. The decree in
the Tobacco case was reached after a full discussion and entered by
the circuit court, consisting of four circuit judges, as a proper
decree, and the Government refused to appeal from it because it did
not feel that it had grounds upon which to base such an appeal. Both
decrees are working well. Both decrees have introduced competi-
tion, the one into branches of the tobacco business and the other into
branches of the oil business. They have not reintroduced ruinous
competition, but they have affected certain prices in such a way as
to show the presence of real competition. The division of the two
trusts by the decrees into several companies was not expected to show
immediate radical change in the business. It may take some years
to show all the benefits of the dissolution, but the limitations of the
decrees in those two cases are so specific as to make altogether impos-
sible a resumption of the old combination against which the decrees
were entered. Even if experience shall show the decrees to be inade-
quate, full opportunity in future litigation will be afforded to supply
the defects.

The contest has been a long one. For years the rule laid down in
the statute was ignored and laughed at, but the power of courts of
justice pursuing quietly the law and enforcing it w^henever oppor-
tunity arose has finally convinced the business public that the anti-
trust law means something, and that the policy of the administration
in enforcing it means something. A number of these combinations
illegally organized and maintained are now coniing forward admit-
ting their illegality and seeking a decree of dissolution, injunction,
and settlement. They are quite" prepared to square with that policy,
provided it be definitely understood that it be impartially enforced
and that security shall attend compliance with the law. My belief

20

is that these decrees mark the beginning of a new era in industrial
development; that what the great corporations of the country now
desire is not what they manifestly did 20 years ago, to wit, to obtain
a monopoly in each business, but it is to maintain a large enough
plant to secure the greatest economy in production on the one hand
and to avoid the danger of the threats of prosecution and disturb-
ance of their business on the other. It will be the work of the high-
est statesmanship to secure these ends, and the Eepublican Party
if given the power will accomplish it.

CONCLUSION.

I have thus outlined, Mr. Eoot and gentlemen, what I consider to
be the chief issues of this campaign. There are others of impor-
tance, but time does not permit me to discuss them. In accordance
with the usual custom I reserve the opportunity to supplement these
remarks in a letter to be addressed to you at a later date when the
alignments of the campaign may require further discussion.

For the present it is sufficient for me to say that it is greatly in the
interest of' the people to maintain the solidarity of the Republican
Party for future usefulness and to continue it and its policies in con-
trol of the destii?ies of the Nation. I can not think that the American
people, after the scrutiny and education of a three-months' campaign,
during which they will be able to see through the fog of misrepre-
sentation and demagoguery, will fail to recognize that the two great
issues which are here presented to them are, first, whether we shall
retain, on a sound and permanent basis, our popular constitutional
representative form of government, with the independence of the
judiciary as necessary to the preservation of those liberties that are
the inheritance of centuries, and, second, whether we shall wel-
come prosperity which is just at our door by maintaining our present
economic business basis and by the encouragement of business expan-
sion and progress through legitimate use of capital.

I know that in this wide country there are many who call them-
selves Democrats, who view, with the same aversion that we Repub-
licans do, the radical propositions of change in our form of gov-
ernment that are recklessly advanced to satisfy what is supposed
to be popular clamor. They are men who revere the Constitution
and the institutions of their Government with all the love and respect
that we could possibly have, men who deprecate disturbance in busi-
ness conditions, and are yearning for that quiet from demagogic agi-
tation which is essential to the enjoyment by the whole people of the
great prosperity which the good crops and the present conditions
ought to bring to us. To them I appeal, as to all Republicans, to join
us in an earnest effort to avert the political and economic revolution
and business paralysis which Republican defeat will bring about.
Such misfortune will fall most heavily on the wage earner. May we
not hope that he will see what his real interest is, will understand
the shallowness of attacks upon existing institutions and deceitful
promises of undefined benefit by undefined changes?

May we not hope that the great majority of voters will be able to
distinguish between the substance of performance and the fustian of
promise ; that they may be able to see that those who would deliber-

21

ately stir uj> discontent and create hostility toward those who are con-
ducting legitimate business enterprises, and who represent the busi-
ness progress of the country, are sowing dragons' teeth? Who are
the people ? They are not alone the unfortunate and the weak ; they
are the weak- and the strong, the poor and the rich, and the many
who are neither, the wage earner and the capitalist, the farmer
and the professional man, the merchant and the manufacturer, the
storekeeper and the clerk, the railroad manager and the employee —
they all make up the people and they all contribute to the running of
the Government, and they have not any of them given into the hands
of anyone the mandate to speak for them as peculiarly the people's
representative. Especially does not he represent them who, assuming
that the people are only the discontented, would stir them up
against the remainder of those whose Government alike this is.
In other campaigns before this the American people have been con-
fused and misled and diverted from the truth and from a clear per-
ception of their welfare by specious appeals to their prejudices and
their misunderstanding, but the clarifying effect of a campaign of
education, the pricking of the bubbles of demagogic promise which
the discussions of a campaign made possible, have brought the people
to a clear perception of their own interests and to a rejection of the
injurious nostrums that in the beginning of the campaign, it was
then feared, they might embrace and adopt. So may we not expect
in the issues which are now before us that the ballots cast in Novem-
ber shall show a prevailing majority in favor of sound process,
great prosperity upon a protective basis and under true constitutional
and representative rule by the people ?

99lftaR^

THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

DATE DUE

NOV 2 J bo<

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

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3 9015 01916 3388

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